The number of people aged over 65 is expected to double in the next 30 years. For many, living longer will mean spending more years with the burdens of chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, ...cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Although researchers have made rapid progress in developing geroprotective interventions that target mechanisms of aging and delay or prevent the onset of multiple concurrent age-related diseases, a lack of standardized techniques to assess healthspan in preclinical murine studies has resulted in reduced reproducibility and slow progress. To overcome this, major centers in Europe and the United States skilled in healthspan analysis came together to agree on a toolbox of techniques that can be used to consistently assess the healthspan of mice. Here, we describe the agreed toolbox, which contains protocols for echocardiography, novel object recognition, grip strength, rotarod, glucose tolerance test (GTT) and insulin tolerance test (ITT), body composition, and energy expenditure. The protocols can be performed longitudinally in the same mouse over a period of 4-6 weeks to test how candidate geroprotectors affect cardiac, cognitive, neuromuscular, and metabolic health.
Two nearly degenerate positive-parity bands with the πg9/22⊗νg9/2−1 configuration and three nearly degenerate negative-parity bands with the πg9/2(p3/2,f5/2)⊗νg9/2−1 configuration have been ...identified in 81Kr. They are interpreted as chiral doublet bands and pseudospin-chiral triplet bands, which is supported by the constrained covariant density functional theory and the multiparticle plus rotor model calculations. The present work reports two new chiral configurations πg9/22⊗νg9/2−1 and πg9/2(p3/2,f5/2)⊗νg9/2−1, and the first example of pseudospin-chiral triplet bands involving the π(p3/2,f5/2) pseudospin doublet.
The psychological autopsy method offers the most direct technique currently available for examining the relationship between particular antecedents and suicide. This systematic review aimed to ...examine the results of studies of suicide that used a psychological autopsy method.
A computer aided search of MEDLINE, BIDS ISI and PSYCHLIT, supplemented by reports known to the reviewers and reports identified from the reference lists of other retrieved reports. Two investigators systematically and independently examined all reports. Median proportions were determined and population attributable fractions were calculated, where possible, in cases of suicide and controls.
One hundred and fifty-four reports were identified, of which 76 met the criteria for inclusion; 54 were case series and 22 were case-control studies. The median proportion of cases with mental disorder was 91% (95 % CI 81-98%) in the case series. In the case-control studies the figure was 90% (88-95%) in the cases and 27% (14-48%) in the controls. Co-morbid mental disorder and substance abuse also preceded suicide in more cases (38%, 19-57%) than controls (6%, 0-13%). The population attributable fraction for mental disorder ranged from 47-74% in the seven studies in which it could be calculated. The effects of particular disorders and sociological variables have been insufficiently studied to draw clear conclusions.
The results indicated that mental disorder was the most strongly associated variable of those that have been studied. Further studies should focus on specific disorders and psychosocial factors. Suicide prevention strategies may be most effective if focused on the treatment of mental disorders.
The electromagnetic character of the ΔI=1 transitions connecting the 1- to 0-phonon and the 2- to 1-phonon wobbling bands should be dominated by an E2 component, due to the collective motion of the ...entire nuclear charge. In the present work it is shown, based on combined angular correlation and linear polarization measurements, that the mixing ratios of all analyzed connecting transitions between low-lying bands in 135Pr interpreted as 0-, 1-, and 2-phonon wobbling bands, have absolute values smaller than one. This indicates predominant M1 magnetic character, which is incompatible with the proposed wobbling nature. All experimental observables are instead in good agreement with quasiparticle-plus-triaxial-rotor model calculations, which describe the bands as resulting from a rapid re-alignment of the total angular momentum from the short to the intermediate nuclear axis.
The
γ
-ray strength function (
γ
SF) and nuclear level density (NLD) have been extracted for the first time from inverse kinematic reactions with the Oslo method. This novel technique allows ...measurements of these properties across a wide range of previously inaccessible nuclei. Proton–
γ
coincidence events from the
d
(
86
Kr
,
p
γ
)
87
Kr
reaction were measured at iThemba LABS and the
γ
SF and NLD in
87
Kr
was obtained. The low-energy region of the
γ
SF is compared to shell-model calculations, which suggest this region to be dominated by M1 strength. The
γ
SF and NLD are used as input parameters to Hauser–Feshbach calculations to constrain
(
n
,
γ
)
cross sections of nuclei using the TALYS reaction code. These results are compared to
86
Kr
(
n
,
γ
)
data from direct measurements.
Abstract
Sex differences in the human brain are of interest for many reasons: for example, there are sex differences in the observed prevalence of psychiatric disorders and in some psychological ...traits that brain differences might help to explain. We report the largest single-sample study of structural and functional sex differences in the human brain (2750 female, 2466 male participants; mean age 61.7 years, range 44-77 years). Males had higher raw volumes, raw surface areas, and white matter fractional anisotropy; females had higher raw cortical thickness and higher white matter tract complexity. There was considerable distributional overlap between the sexes. Subregional differences were not fully attributable to differences in total volume, total surface area, mean cortical thickness, or height. There was generally greater male variance across the raw structural measures. Functional connectome organization showed stronger connectivity for males in unimodal sensorimotor cortices, and stronger connectivity for females in the default mode network. This large-scale study provides a foundation for attempts to understand the causes and consequences of sex differences in adult brain structure and function.
PDF
